What Choice Do American Voters Have in 2016 Other Than a Revolutionary Political Realignment? February 5, 2016 Vol. IX, No. 2 10:13 am Authentic Revolutionary Leaders with Money are Dangerous If a 74-year-old Independent socialist can come from 41 points behind to tie the most admired woman in the world in the Democratic
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What Choice Do American Voters Have in 2016 Other Than a Revolutionary Political Realignment?
February 5, 2016 Vol. IX, No. 2 10:13 am
Authentic Revolutionary Leaders with Money are Dangerous
If a 74-year-old Independent socialist can come from 41 points behind to tie the most admired woman in the world in the Democratic Caucus in Iowa thanks to a 70-point advantage (84% to 14%) among-18-to-29-year-old voters, then a political realignment is underway.
If Bernie Sanders, an authentic political revolutionary, can raise $75.1 million with an anti-Wall Street/Washington D.C. battle cry about “a rigged economy where the wealthiest 1% earn 99% of new income while middle class wages stagnate,” then a political realignment led by an authentic revolutionary against Washington D.C. ineptitude and private greed is underway.
Authentic revolutionary leaders with money are dangerous.
If the top two winners of the Iowa Republican Caucus include the most despised Republican U.S. Senator in the 54-member Senate Republican Conference (Ted Cruz: 27.6%) and a rogue, bombastic billionaire with bad hair and no elective office experience (Trump 24.3%), then a political realignment led by authentic revolutionaries is underway.
Further evidence of a major realignment in the GOP is the fact that the top four vote-getters in the Iowa Republican Caucus, with a combined landslide total of 84.3%, include two Cuban American first-term U.S. Senators (Cruz 27.6%; Rubio 23.1%), an African American neurosurgeon with no experience in public office (Carson 9.3%), and Trump (24.3%).
Those top four non-traditional Iowa Republican Caucus winners have raised $250 million (Cruz $89.9 million; Rubio $77.2 million; Carson $64.2; Trump $19.4).
Authentic revolutionary leaders with money are dangerous.
Only Authentic Revolutionary Leaders Need Apply
The political realignment of 2016 transcends all traditional notions of reasonable behavior and tenants of electability. Those who have worked their way up the ladder of public elective leadership over time are now seen as part of the problem.
Hillary Clinton, the grande dame of American politics, finds herself out of place at the casting call for the lead role in the new drama about America’s future. She desperately clings to a sense of superior capability, yet younger voters only see an old general fighting the last war.
Jeb Bush has raised $155.5 million, more money than any competitor, but he, like Hillary, is not an authentic revolutionary leader. They are members of privileged family political dynasties.
Jeb Bush, like Charles and Thomas Adams, sons and brothers of U.S. Presidents, John Adams (1797-1801) and John Quincy Adams (1825-1829), is the son and brother of presidents who yearns to be his own man but cannot escape the gravity of Bush administration baggage.
All presidential elections are about the future. Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton are mired in the past. They are the consummate establishment candidates during an antiestablishment election-year that sees most voters realigning behind authentic revolutionary leaders.
Why are voters demanding authentic revolutionary leaders in 2016? Because the most important problems facing the country in 2016 are the same problems the country faced in 2006.
2006 List of National Problems is the Same as the 2016 List
The first act of the 2016 presidential campaign drama was written ten years ago in 2006.
That was the year when Republicans all over America turned on GOP President George W. Bush and a Republican-led U.S. Congress because they were spending money like liberal Democrats while neglecting the public’s most important concerns about war, terrorism, jobs, the economy, immigration, poverty, social security, healthcare and a culture of corruption in DC.
Democrats seized on the disdain Republicans felt for their own leaders and won a majority in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, as well as a majority of the nation’s governors and state legislators. In 2007, they elected the first woman U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Unfortunately for Republicans, the list of the most important voter concerns of 2006 had not changed by the time presidential election year 2008 rolled around. Barack Obama won the race for the Oval Office because Americans no longer trusted a Republican president with the list.
Unfortunately for Democrats, President Obama neglected the list of the most important voter concerns of 2006 and decided instead to make his own list, putting healthcare at the top when voters were reeling from the worst recession since the Great Depression.
In 2010, it was Democrats who turned against the Democratic establishment in Washington, ceding the U.S. House and a majority of state governments to Republicans.
Then came the presidential election of 2012 and the midterm elections of 2014. Republicans argued that President Obama was to blame for lack of progress on the 2006 list of national problems. Democrats insisted that the Republican hardliners in Congress were to blame.
For ten years, establishment leaders in both parties have been given the power to solve the problems of the day and they have not done it. War, terrorism, jobs, the economy, immigration, poverty, social security, healthcare, deficit spending, the national debt and the culture of corruption in Washington DC, are all still on the list and getting worse.
Hence, you are seeing a political realignment in 2016 led by authentic revolutionaries with money. Most Americans have concluded that the reason the nation’s problems have not been solved is because of inept establishment leaders in Washington, DC.
Look at the list. What choice do voters have in 2016 other than a revolutionary realignment?
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Thank You for Reading the John Davis Political Report
John N. Davis
